For readers of the tea leaves of international multimedia conglomerates, a very significant incident took place last week when Prince Alwaleed bin Talal al-Saud was in New York discussing "investment issues" with Rupert Murdoch. As a 7% shareholder in News Corp it is only natural that the prince would wish to visit one of his many global media holdings. And in an interview with Charlie Rose on PBS reported in the Financial Times, he confirmed that he would be voting for James Murdoch as the successor to Rupert when the time comes.

"He's really Rupert Murdoch in the making and he's almost there now," said Prince Alwaleed, raising the mental image of a sophisticated regeneration programme a la Doctor Who taking place in the bowels of the News Corp Tardis.

On the same day that endorsement was reported, it emerged in London that James Murdoch's decision to buy a 17.9% stake in ITV in 2006 was in contravention of competition policy and the public interest. The court of appeal ruling means that over the past three years the BSkyB investment has lost £500m in value, having been initially purchased as a way of potentially blocking Virgin Media from making a bid for ITV.

In other circumstances it might look like a bad case of junior cocking up the family business – but in News Corp land this is the kind of audacious move that earns you the right to wear the crown. The tactical advantage the purchase gave Sky over both the struggling terrestrial broadcaster in the UK and a potentially stronger rival in pay-TV was worth the £500m it has blown on ITV's declining shares. As the tightly run BSkyB has continued to manufacture pots of money through the media downturn, it will hardly notice the amount missing from its bottom line. The only debatable point would have been whether Virgin and ITV could have pulled off the deal given the historical difficulty of making mergers work.

While Sky can decide how to play kingmaker over ITV's future, by potentially picking a purchaser for the stake, it might be the case that ITV's share price will improve too. Over the past year or so the commercial broadcaster has done a good job of getting sympathetic regulators to unburden it of public service broadcasting obligations and enable potential new revenue streams (via product placement rules being relaxed), and has become the home of live event entertainment shows.

ITV's very strong performance in the last quarter of 2009 could well continue in 2010, making it a more desirable takeover target, although it has a way to go to bounce back from its current 57p to the heady heights of 135p – the price at which Sky bought it.

Just as the end is in sight for the generational race to find a successor for Rupert, so the unlocking of Sky's blocking stake in ITV, the appointment of a new chief executive at Channel 4 and the end of the current governmental term are likely to see a generational change in British television.

Whilst the season is strictly over for wonky predictions, it is hard to imagine that in six months' time we will have all of our commercial free-to-air broadcast channels remaining in the same hands. Channel Five owner RTL, which is very much playing a long game, will be interested in either reviving a merger with Channel 4 or in the bigger prize of taking on ITV. Throw into the mix the prospect of a full or semi-privatisation for BBC Worldwide and we could be looking at a significantly changed landscape by 2011. Generational change is long overdue for the crisis-torn British broadcasting establishment and this is undoubtedly something even James Murdoch can identify with.